


A Sky Full of Ghosts

by RileyC



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, M/M, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2015-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-14 10:22:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4560978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RileyC/pseuds/RileyC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark and Bruce watch the stars.</p>
<p>That's about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sky Full of Ghosts

Bruce Wayne found himself contemplating parallel worlds. There was one, he knew, where he dressed as a bat every night and ventured forth into Gotham City to battle crime and injustice. And there was this world, where he rode shotgun in a dinged up old Ford pickup truck, as Clark Kent drove the dusty back roads of Kansas with twilight coming on and unpretentious country songs playing on the radio.

There were worse worlds to live in.

Still… “Are we going anywhere in particular?”

Clark glanced at him, not quite smiling, and said, “Almost there.”

And if that didn’t quite answer his question Bruce decided he was content to wait and let life happen. Smallville had that effect, if you stayed there long enough. A sideways glance at Clark and he could admit it wasn’t just the bucolic community that brought on this sensation.

A few miles more and Clark turned the pickup off the road to bump over unplowed ground, headlights cutting a swath through the high, wild grass. The pickup rolled to a stop at last near a grove of cottonwoods silhouetted against the darkening sky, near a rocky bluff. Clark shut off the radio as Hank Williams sang about jambalaya, crawfish pie, and big fun on the bayou, and said, “We’re here.”

“Okay.” He didn’t immediately jump to get out the truck, however. Struck by a need to get his bearings, assess the lay of the land, Bruce took in his surroundings. As this primarily consisted of the grass and that bluff, the tall stalks of corn in a field across the road and those cottonwoods, all of it cloaked by the dusk, the appraisal did not take long.

Clark gave him a puzzled look, shrugged, and retrieved a bundle stuffed behind the seat. He opened his door. “Are you coming?”

“I’m thinking about it.” Thinking about what they were doing out here in the twilight, in the gloaming. Thinking about how those tall stalks of corn swayed and rustled, stirred by a breeze. Was there a breeze? The air felt awfully still just at the moment.

Aware that he was taking too long and that Clark’s curiosity was morphing into concern, Bruce opened his door and climbed out. He held onto the door, however, muscles bunched with tension—nothing else betrayed that he had been startled for a moment as something--a twig?--snapped over in the cornfield.

“Bruce?”

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

He could always say he was still feeling the effects of the fear toxin. That could even be true. If it was a choice between that, or residual whim-whams from a book he’d read years ago, re: Kansas cornfields, Bruce knew which option he would pick. “Over in the cornfield,” he said, not making a drama of it. “Thought I heard something.”

If there was a dubious glimmer in Clark’s eyes for a moment, there was no mockery, and that made all the difference. With his glasses tipped down, Clark narrowed his eyes and swept his gaze across the cornfield. Scan completed, he reported, “There’s a cat hunting for mice, not much else. What did it sound like?”

“Nothing. A snapped twig.”

“Probably the cat.”

“Yes.” Yes, a cat, or a hundred other things utterly harmless and mundane. Maybe Scarecrow had altered the fear toxin formula, added an extra pinch of something to make it pack a bigger punch and stay with you longer. Maybe it hadn’t been such a great idea to come to a place where creepy scarecrows and eerie cornfields abounded.

Anyhow, he was out here tonight because Clark wanted to show him something--Clark, who had been pensive and distracted all day. That was unusual enough to take precedence over any other concern.

“So?” He closed the door, the sound startlingly loud in the uncanny quiet. “What did you want to show me?”

Clark shifted the bulky bundle in his arms and smiled. “Something you will never see in Gotham.”

Given the things Gotham had to offer on just an average night, Bruce wasn’t sure how to take that. Were they about to witness some eldritch ceremony to summon the dark lord of the corn and offer him a human sacrifice? Or just watch the fireflies cavort? That he was out here with Clark Kent, as opposed to John Constantine, would seem to tilt things in favor of frolicking fireflies.

Clark struck out toward the bluff and Bruce fell in beside him. It was a good night for a hike; the storm clouds that had threatened earlier had completely cleared off now and the air was crisp enough to remind you that autumn wasn’t far off now. Before long they were scrambling up the bluff. An owl perched atop a hoodoo to survey the land was startled by their approach and took to the air on a loud screech. Bruce could hear the swish of its wings as it passed by and soared out over the wild grass.

“This is it,” Clark announced a few seconds later as they gained the top of the bluff.

‘This’ was a grassy meadow, most likely sprinkled with wildflowers by day. By night, its chief features were an outcropping of hoodoos, these more mushroom-shaped than pinnacle. A fanciful person might imagine they were rocky sentinels set to guard this meadow. Bruce allowed this whimsical idea to linger in his head for barely a second, of course.

“Give me a hand?” Clark broke into his thoughts. He unrolled the bundle he’d carried and shook it out to reveal a thick, heavy quilt.

Bruce considered that quilt, wondered what it portended. Lurid possibilities sprang to mind but… No, this was something else, he decided, and pitched in to spread the quilt out over the ground. When Clark sat down on it and patted the spot beside him, Bruce only wavered a moment before he settled down beside him.

It was dark enough now that everything beyond the bluff—the pickup, the sinister cornfield—were entirely lost in it. Clark had that right anyway, the night was never this dark even in Gotham. No matter what grim corner of Crime Alley you might find yourself in, you could glimpse a tawdry glow of neon or the dying sputters of a streetlamp; headlights slashing like a razor through the night. This was different. This was darkness primordial, the kind you didn’t find today unless you sought out the most remote reaches on Earth. He hadn’t thought to find that in Smallville.

A coyote yipped off in the distance, soon joined by another, a whole chorus raised in greeting as the first stars began to come out.

“Is it a meteor shower?” he asked as he leaned back on his elbows. Hadn’t the Perseid shower already happened, though?

“Not tonight, no,” Clark answered. The words were innocuous enough but there was something in his posture as he sat with ankles crossed, arms wrapped around raised knees, that told Bruce this was no ordinary night of stargazing.

“If I knew what was going on, Clark…”

That swiftly, and with a sideways smile at him, Clark blew out a gusty sigh that must have taken his worries with it. At ease now, he sank down on the quilt with another, softer exhalation. “Sorry. I’ll explain later,” he said. “Lie back; it’s better that way.”

Risqué possibilities flitted across his mind once more. Again, he kept them to himself and sank back on the quilt. It was the kind of quilt meant to keep you snug and warm through the kind of Kansas winters that spawned rude sayings about brass monkeys and would have made timid settlers turn their Conestogas around and head back to St. Louis. It was more than up to providing a comfortable resting place out here under this wide open sky. Bruce only hoped it wasn’t a priceless Kent family heirloom.

He should have been restless, chafing at the bit to get back to Gotham—and he _was_ , more or less. Daily reports, assurances that everything was in hand, commands to, _“Do enjoy your holiday, sir,”_ were of help in holding those urges at bay. The truth was he didn’t often stop to look up at the night sky, let alone smell the roses. There wasn’t time. The only thing he ever scanned the sky was for the Bat signal or a hijacked dirigible about to rain down something nasty. But if he were to ever stop on a Gotham rooftop and gaze upwards, he wouldn’t see a sky like this.

How did you even describe it? Diamonds sprinkled across black velvet wasn’t only trite, it didn’t begin to approach the vastness and terrible majesty of it. You didn’t have to wonder why the ancients had felt awed and humbled by this sky, why they had placed their gods and heroes there, not when you saw it like this. A sky like that taught you why _awesome_ meant daunting and apprehension every bit as much as it meant breathtaking and wondrous.

Beside him, Clark shifted and said, “Good, huh?”

Bruce heard the smile in his voice. He didn’t begrudge him that. “Not bad, Kent, not bad.” He stretched out some more and released his own pent up breath, letting go of all the fear and tension with it. No, he wasn’t here with Constantine, but he felt exorcised all the same. Scarecrow could tinker with his formula all he liked; the fear he brewed up would never be a match for Clark and all the things that Clark could show him.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Thought you’d enjoy it.”

And if there was a faint, smug note in Clark’s voice, it was entirely warranted.

When he judged it was time, when they had pointed out favorite constellations to each other and talked of ancient heroes—and one of them confessed he had always wanted a Pegasus—and the sky was filled to bursting with stars and a gibbous moon, Bruce said, “Tell me about it.”

Another sigh, an echo of that earlier, troubled preoccupation, and then Clark pointed out a constellation—Sirius, the Dog Star. “Right there,” he said and moved his finger a fraction, waiting for Bruce to sight along it. “That’s the Canis Major Dwarf galaxy, twenty-five thousand light-years from here. The Chinese call it the Vermillion Bird—a pheasant with five-colored plumage and forever lit with fire.” There was a reverential note in his voice, as if he spoke of the rarest, most cherished of treasures. A shadow of grief, too, and Bruce suddenly knew what the next words would be. “That’s where Krypton is, where it was. This is the anniversary of its destruction.” 

Unbidden, images flickered across Bruce’s mind: a dark alley, gunshots, pearls scattered across the asphalt—two graves marked with white roses for remembrance every year. “I understand.”

Clark glanced at him, his smile dimmed and a bit lopsided. He nodded. “I know.”

Twenty-five years, or twenty-five thousand, it made no difference. Ghosts were eternal, after all. 

“Do you know what constellations they saw in the sky?”

“You remember Nightwing and Flamebird?”

“Hhn,” Bruce grumbled as he shifted position and straightened out his legs. “Just a little.”

Clark’s smile had regained some of its usual brilliance. “Little pitchers, big ears.”

As if Dick had ever needed to eavesdrop to pick up interesting tidbits about Clark’s Kryptonian heritage. Usually Clark would present those details in a manner that would please David Attenborough— _‘And here we observe the Kryptonian Science Council in its natural state of obstinate denial…’_ There was a hushed gravity in his manner tonight that made Bruce suspect Clark didn’t share these details often. 

“There’s a constellation for them—Nightwing and Flamebird?”

Clark nodded. “It’s kind of like an ouroboros and symbolizes their cycle of rebirth and finding each other.” He raised a hand as if to try and trace it in the sky but faltered and let his hand drop. When he spoke again his voice had grown rough, as though his throat ached. “I’ll never see that. I’ll never see the sky I was born under.”

No, not even if the Fortress created the most authentic simulation. It could never be the same. A simulation wouldn’t let you rest on a hillside as a breeze cooled your skin and night prowlers serenaded the darkness that fell over the Earth. You couldn’t swap heroic tales of romantic adventure and adversity under a replicated sky. 

Bruce thought about ghosts and the memories they peddled and how the cruelest thing you could ever be told was to forget what you’d lost and let it go. He sank down on the quilt and brought Clark with him. “Tell me about Krypton’s skies, Clark. I’ll remember them with you.”

For a moment Clark held himself absolutely still and Bruce wondered if he had presumed too much. In the next instant, Clark scootched even closer and Bruce felt a kiss brush against his jaw. It was all right, then, and Bruce settled back, warm and comfortable as Clark spoke of Yuda, Mistress of the Moons Wegthor and Mithen. Of Wegthor’s terrible destruction, and how Mithen was most likely lost in the same cataclysm that too Krypton. There were heroes and heroines, daring deeds and a selection of creatures that would have done a medieval bestiary proud, all of them immortalized in Krypton’s stormy skies before science did away with all the myths.

Like Perseus and Pegasus, they all lived again so long as someone could tell their story, and as Clark spun out the tales Bruce began to believe that if he squinted just so he could see them up there in the star washed night. 

 

 

======  
 _"By the time the light from some stars gets here, they are already dead. For those stars, we see only their ghosts. We see their lights, but their bodies perished long, long ago."_  
Attributed to William Herschel on the rebooted _Cosmos_

**Author's Note:**

> "By the time the light from some stars gets here, they are already dead. For those stars, we see only their ghosts. We see their lights, but their bodies perished long, long ago."
> 
> Attributed to William Herschel on the rebooted _Cosmos_ , and the inspiration for this.
> 
> Also: I am aware Krypton should be located somewhere much closer to Earth. I wanted it somewhere else for this, and what with Dog Stars and Vermillion Birds, how could one resist this particular locale. 
> 
> Mithen once asked for Superbat stargazing. If I fulfilled that previously--here's another version. 
> 
> Oh, and the book that gave Bruce the whim-whams, re: Kansas cornfields, was _Still Life with Crows_ , an Agent Pendergast thriller by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child. Lord knows it gave me the willies, and I am much more familiar with cornfields than Bruce would ever be.


End file.
